I Mowed The Yard In My Sleep, And I Failed

I spent a long time on the phone last night, talking to my parents, who are currently very occupied with kitchen renovations. My house, changing. I have never felt emotional about alterations made to my childhood home until now. Or, that is to say, until I woke up this morning. When I was on the phone I just tried to envision the new layout, offered advice when it was requested, let them talk. Yes, them: My parents both pick up the phone when I call home because my mom thinks I will tell my dad things I won't tell her (true) and doesn't want to "miss anything." But I talk to her about things I don't tell my father, too, so I don't really know understand that argument; in the end, I guess it's nice I don't have to repeat myself.

I had a dream later that revolved around cutting the grass in my backyard, and I was failing. I had mowed the yard to perfection for years and now everything was wrong. I was pissing myself with green inability and yet certain in my head that what I was doing had to be right even though I knew it wasn't. Standing out there, for some reason putting the blade setting far too low and doing one stripe around the perimeter of the yard, almost scorching-the-earth short, bald even, my dad looking down from the deck with a look that mixed shock and disappointment, he himself knowing that I was better than my performance. Dreams often don't make sense but I woke up disappointed in myself anyway, because I know what it was: I know it's a subconscious metaphor for the sometimes overwhelming inadequacy I feel as I try to write this book about my grandmother's childhood during World War II. It brought tears to my ears briefly this morning; it is again now.

And you want to know another reason why? I love cutting the grass and I take pride in it. I would cut it every week for my dad and also for my neighbor, and I even sometimes helped my friend Blake with his lawn mowing business. And I had style, too, nobody did it better than me: I had always made two passes around the outside — and never with a change in grass height — before doing either vertical or diagonal stripes across the inside bulk of the yard. That little bit of creativity and focus, vying for perfection in those stripes, was part of what made the mundane sublime. I would have done it for free, so the extra cash I made was a solid deal.

It's the smell, I think, that I like the best. Two-stroke engine fuel, the little bit that spilled while filling the tank wiped on my T-shirt, mixing with sweat and dirt and grass; the exhaust hangs heavy in the humid summer Georgia air that's already sweetened by flowers full in bloom. Gasoline, especially the oil-gas mixture that is two-stoke, is such a narcissistic odor, just like permanent markers and rubber cement and your own farts in bed: you know it's bad and you have to smell it anyway to satisfy yourself.

clip-art adds credibility to my glue addiction

But the noise is nice, too. It's fulfilling, that droning engine, a small muffler barely hushing the violent processes powering that sharpened fan blade whirring inches from your feet. I've heard some quote that I'm not going to bother looking up, but it's something along the lines of "meditation is the art of automating the body so the mind can work." The combination of droning sounds, intoxicating smells and physical focus provided me with this wonderful alone time, completely within my own head, nothing to shape my thoughts but the direction they took on their own, and a feeling of blissful contentment I yearn for on a daily basis. I get a taste of it from a long, purposeless walk through the streets of New York, my thoughts wandering like my feet, but it still isn't the same. 

That's why on days like today, overcome by wind and rain and gray dreary insanity, deprived of my walk of serenity, I write crazy stuff like this around midnight. I feel nostalgia for a hot July Georgia day. I recall being ten years younger, home from college for the summer, working for my friend's uncle doing custom woodwork and renovating rich peoples' homes, working myself to physical exhaustion through the day, taking a quick shower and heading off again to sit in lawn chairs in somebody's driveway at night with beers and girls and music and fireflies.

I had forgotten that dream over the course of the day as I worked hard on the book, researching and writing and doing. And then I read this and it all came rushing back. I need to get back to work now, to prove I can.